Culture Change

Drive culture change with diversity and inclusion

Lasting culture change at work cannot happen unless it’s linked to all your systems, processes, people and behaviours. Diversity presents organisations with the opportunity to get ahead: by leveraging the skills of their existing workforce more deliberately, and by looking forwards and outwards to a wider pool of talent, consumers and service users.

We’re specialists in the strategic planning that drives better, more inclusive workplace cultures. We know how to pinpoint your business case for diversity. Our culture change consultants will engage your staff – at all levels – in your diversity and inclusion agenda. And after 25 years in the business, we know how to measure impact and calculate your return on investment.

Discover the drivers, best practices and strategies essential to long-lasting culture change

Our clients understand the bottom-line benefits of recruiting and retaining the best people, not just those that look like the people who are already at the top. They also know that having managers who are culturally intelligent will mean their staff will create an inclusive culture that encourages innovation and delivers discretionary effort.

The small things we say and do matter. People notice and decide whether they are valued on the basis of things that a manager might be oblivious of. And people stay or leave a company because of their relationship with that manager. Inclusive managers are the key to companies hanging onto the most talented people.

"When we estimated the business case in advance of starting this programme, we thought it would at minimum break even and probably save us twice what it was costing us in negative behaviour, tribunals, disciplinary, wasted working time, etc. The actual result was an absolutely enormous saving of 12 times the cost of the programme."

Make diversity best practice your business as usual.

Culturally intelligent leaders are 3.5 times more likely to get the full potential out of their staff

85% of the world’s CEOs say a clear diversity and inclusion strategy leads to increased performance

What are the business benefits of more inclusive cultures?

Without building a culture of inclusion, there is a clear risk of heightened conflict and reduced engagement among teams. Equally, effective diversity management is not merely a case of issuing sound-bites and quick fixes.

A McKinsey report in 2012 found that “though CEOs made gender diversity a priority in more than 80% of our 60 participating companies, only about half of employees surveyed from the same companies agreed that the CEO is committed to it”.

And research commissioned in 2014 by the Economic and Social Research Council emphasises how “the business case should be systemic rather than ‘bolted on’ so that diversity management becomes ‘business as usual’.”

Related Work

London Underground brought in EW Group on a £1.3m contract to train 2,000 managers over three years. The diversity agenda was critical to the Underground’s mission "to be a world-class tube for a world-class city".